Case closed

Our opinion: Two police union leaders drop a frivolous lawsuit against District Attorney David Soares. Political acrimony is one thing, but it’s best to keep it out of the courts.

This one is for everyone who cares about the law, about politics and all the ways, especially those so petty yet impassioned, the two can intersect in Albany County.

We’re pleased to note that two police union leaders have dropped the utterly frivolous lawsuit they filed against District Attorney David Soares two years ago.

We’re pleased to say good riddance, and glad to suggest that from here, even the contentious politics that won’t seem to die in Albany County might well be on a more substantive path.

How couldn’t they be, really, now that the courts are free of the case brought by James Lyman, a retired Albany detective and executive director of Council 82, and Christian Mesley, an Albany police officer and president of Council 82.

“Mental anguish,” they claimed, after Mr. Soares responded in kind to their allegations against him during his bitter campaign for re-election in 2008.

Both Mr. Lyman and Mr. Mesley had taken strong objection to what they regarded as the low bail that a county judge had set for a man accused of a man pointing a gun at two Albany police officers.

It hardly seemed to matter that judges, not DAs, determine bail in that and every case. Nor was it of much relevance to the former plaintiffs that Mr. Soares’ office had been recused in that case. Mr. Lyman and Mr. Mesley denounced him nonetheless.

To that, Mr. Soares said in a TV interview:

“It is very disingenuous and troubling that former law enforcement, people who are familiar with the criminal justice system, are out there perpetrating what is essentially a lie.”

Harsh words? Surely.

But “mental anguish”? Or, as Mr. Mesley had alleged in the lawsuit, undue stress because of the “public hatred” he endured as a result of Mr. Soares’ comments?

Please.

By that standard, a typical Albany political campaign would be most noteworthy not for which candidate received the most votes, but rather for the collective psychological trauma inflicted on all the participants.

There might be dark humor to be found in all this, were it not for such grimly serious comment about the state of political discourse around here.

Mr. Soares’ election seven years ago and subsequent re-election three years ago will never be accepted in certain quarters. Mr. Lyman’s and Mr. Mesley’s lawsuit was further proof of that.

But at least Mr. Soares can continue to apply justice within the confines of the same legal system where a nuisance lawsuit against him has met its own just fate. The district attorney’s detractors can express their displeasure with him, however intensely, in less unconstructive ways.